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God, just shut up already, Richard Gwyn

Would someone please write a book about John A. Macdonald called EVIL DRUNKEN ASSHOLE? I swear I would run, not walk, to buy this. The myth of Macdonald is (with all due respect to Will Ferguson) still crying out for the frank calumny that is the just reward of every great man. It is not as though an honest polemic against him would lack for material; it's all there in the existing history books, guarded by the bestial excuse that a little corruption, deceit, jingoism, and unjust war must be overlooked in the quest to build a nation. Most of those who dip pen in inkwell to praise Macdonald would never accept the same defences in the case against George W. Bush. But then again, many of those who unthinkingly refer to him as "Sir John A." (a neat compaction of veneration and chumminess that is the eternal shibboleth of the toady) are the same people who snickered at Conrad Black for seeking a knighthood and peddled outrageous historical misrepresentations in the effort to prevent him obtaining it.

He makes a lousy plaster saint anyway. If we were as conscious of our past as we ought to be, the old fight between Macdonald and Laurier would still be alive, alive in the lurid hues of a Jacques-Louis David.

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Comments (18)

I thought you were a writer. If I remember correctly, you are also something of a historian by training.

In short, I See A Great Need.

And I'm not much of a supporter of culture, but I swear on a stack of greasy Bibles that I will buy a fifty of these if you endeavour to write it. Rules : 1. It must be titled "EVIL DRUNKEN ASSHOLE", as the main title and not a subtitle (a subtitle will be permitted, and even encouraged); 2. If you self-publish, it's gotta be priced reasonably.

Crid [cridcridatgmail]:

I'm good for 10 copies, and I don't recognize a single name mentioned in the blog post. (Conrad Black only as a disgraced newsmaker. And OK, I've heard of Bush, too.) It's just fun to watch people thrash.

And wait a minute, wasn't this the same Cosh that was recently complaining that people kept telling him to write a book, but didn't tell him what it should be about? I can't do beter than Tybalt's formulation. Write this book.

Crid: you don't recognize the name "John A. Macdonald"?

Put up or shut up, Cosh.

Lord Bob:

The trouble is that what people like about Sir John A. (I've been saying that for years) is that he was a jingoistic, sometimes corrupt alcoholic whose best method of solving a problem was to ignore it until it went away.

Evil Drunken Asshole, therefore, might cause Cosh to go down as the flag-waving Canada-loving Macdonald-humping historian of the twenty-first century.

(P.S.: I do object to the "evil". "Drunken asshole", however, I fully grant.)

Oh, come on, Lott, when's the last time you wrote a book on spec?

I would grant Bob's critique that "Evil" may be over-egging the pudding (I'm not so sure, but I do understand the objection) but surely he would not object to "corrupt" as an acceptable alternative modifier. "CORRUPT DRUNKEN ASSHOLE", in my view, would be an acceptable alternate title.

Chris:

As I recall from writing a poli sci paper on him a half a dozen years ago, our founding father was an inovator of talking points and routinely offered his partisans advise on how to stand on both sides of an issue at once. Not exactly "I could never tell a lie" type material, and we wonder why Canadian identity is a bit hazy.

Lord Bob:

I could live with "corrupt". Every other mid-to-late 19th-century politician was pretty corrupt too, but there's no doubt that the Pacific Scandal, among lesser-known adventures, should be held against him.

Sean:

Put me down for another 10 copies and a case of imported beer.

>Oh, come on, Lott, when's the last time you >wrote a book on spec?

So write a proposal and shop it. Though you might have to water down the title.

Crid [cridcridatgmail]:

> you don't recognize the
> name "John A. ....

The coot with farm?

dkite:

I'll buy one.

The warm fuzzies about Sir John A. has everything to do with his anti-americanism, and the fervent desire to have our own 'founding father'.

Odd though in the west, the only thing I think of when his name is mentions are the great swathes of prime real estate in every western city that are also toxic waste dumps.

Ah our great canadian institutions.

Derek

An American Passing Through:

As an American I could obviously not give a ... /ahem/ I obviously realize it is not my place to comment on Prime Minister McDonald.

However, in looking at his wikipedia bio, I see that McDonald was the great uncle to actor Glenn Ford.

Glenn Ford, Canadian? Who Knew?

Did Conrad Black seek a knighthood and somehow stumble on a peerage instead?

Don't be a whiny bitch, sweetie. I know everything there is to know about proposals these days. The word is 'platform'.

leaf:

Ummm, not quite sure what title the rabid neocon and zionist Conrad Black was looking for, but the one he got after he was caught stealing from the rich in the USA is one he hardly bargained for - Lord Cornholed of the Coleman federal prison.

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